


AO3 is for all kinds of fanfic

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [3]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:18:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23011105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: An impassioned tumblr rant about the policing of content
Series: March Meta Matters [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Kudos: 11
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Imported for day 3 of March Meta Matters.
> 
> Chapter 1 is the original post. Chapter 2 is some further reblog conversation.
> 
> Original post here:
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/147307380999/ao3-is-for-all-kinds-of-fanfic

And other fanworks, for that matter, but let’s talk about fic: When AO3 was proposed, it was in response to Strikethrough and other similar events. Livejournal deleted a lot of accounts without bothering to distinguish between actual pedophiles, survivor support groups, and 100% consensual fantasy fandom activities being done by adults with other adults (most of which involved RP accounts for 16-year-old Harry Potter characters anyway).

I helped write the first AO3 Terms of Service and set up the Abuse committee. AO3 was always intended to be welcoming to all kinds of fic, no matter how dirty, sick, socially unacceptable, bizarre, or out of fashion. During those initial TOS talks, we specifically discussed grotesque RPF snuff porn as the test case for something all of us on the committee found distasteful but would nonetheless defend because, by defending it, we created a space where all of our own favorite things were protected too.

Policing fic content is a slippery slope. Even if you only police the “worst” stuff, you create an environment where the more sensitive authors and no few of the ones “shipping to cope” are no longer comfortable posting at all. Attacking people for posting fic about rape/abuse/etc. **_is demanding that all survivors disclose_**. No amount of whining and backtracking will change this fact. It is a disgusting behavior that drives people from your fandoms and creates needless misery while adding nothing of value to the community.

**If you want to kick certain kinds of content off of AO3, you do not belong on AO3 in the first place.**


	2. Chapter 2

Frillyfacefins reblogged with commentary about many fans moving from fanfiktion.de to AO3 and about liking darker content as a teen than as a 20-something. [I responded](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/147352349114/ao3-is-for-all-kinds-of-fanfic) talking about my own fannish history:

> Thank you for this wonderful addition!
> 
> I got into fandom when I was 13 (I’m now 35), and I know what you mean: I was rather precocious, and the stuff I liked at that very young age and the stuff I liked later on in my teens was _dark_. The fic I read and write now is far tamer.
> 
> Like you say, there are many archives. For people who want one where there’s no porn or no sex involving underage characters or where the age of consent is treated as 16 instead of 18 or where RPF is banned or where only canon pairings are allowed–or any other content restrictions you can dream up–there have been archives like that in the past. Some still exist. Some have yet to be founded. Fanfiction.net is still bigger than all of the other archives combined, and it has far more content restrictions than AO3.
> 
> I’m not saying AO3 is for everyone. Maybe some of Tumblr fandom needs to go found its own archive with different content guidelines. But for people who do want to use AO3, allowing “problematic” content is the cornerstone of its ethos. Content policers: You don’t get to take advantage of the wonderful outpouring of creativity that AO3 has inspired and then turn around and attack the principles that enabled that creativity in the first place.
> 
> FFN and AO3 are both huge and popular. There’s nothing to say that we can’t have a third or a tenth multifandom archive, and fandom used to be full of single-fandom ones. Go out and make the spaces you want to inhabit, people! Vote with your feet. Vote by creating, not tearing down.
> 
> For a(n unavoidably fragmentary) look at the history of multifandom archives, see [Fanlore](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Multifandom_Archive).

A conversation broke out about warnings. Some fool said people can get away with not tagging anything. Other people pointed out that you do actually have to at least choose CNTW, and that CNTW counts as a warning. [My response was](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/147560695249/ao3-is-for-all-kinds-of-fanfic):

> Yes. This is all excellent advice. There’s nothing wrong with thorough warnings if you’re inclined that way, just as there’s nothing wrong with a more streamlined labeling style.
> 
> In practice, I see CNTW used most frequently in two situations:
> 
> First, many authors want to make it clear that they are not taking responsibility for anyone’s mental health. They’re not out to hurt people, but they’re also not here to take care of total strangers’ feelings. All of their work is CNTW, so you can either have a friend preview, take your chances, or stay away.
> 
> Second, there _are_ cases where it’s ambiguous whether the warnings apply. I sometimes prefer to use CNTW on darker, more ambiguous dubcon fics because I don’t consider them rape fics, but I also don’t feel like fighting round eight billion of “But it would be rape in real life”. Putting on a ‘rape’ tag would feel like false advertising, but only tagging ‘dubcon’ like I would on a fluffier dubcon fic doesn’t feel quite right either.
> 
> Or maybe I’ve written a character death fic that is temporary character death or set in the afterlife. The death is front an center, but the part of death fic that makes _me_ want the warning is absent. Or I’ve written fic about characters who are of age in their own context but still under 18. Tagging ‘underage’ feels false, but…
> 
> This post has a few responses like: “But why wouldn’t you help people avoid triggers when it’s so simple?’ The reality is that it’s not simple.
> 
> For me personally, also, there are types of author’s notes I won’t use on porn. “I know it’s problematic, but…” = instant buzzkill. If I’m writing to get people off, I am not going to ruin that by putting on a note that is a turn off anymore than I will include onscreen negotiation if the kink isn’t about that. This may make the fic much less readable for some, but the fic wasn’t for those people anyway.

Some chucklefuck showed up with this piece of wisdom:

"okay, so we just ignore that PROVEN FACT that fictional pedophilia and rape glorification/normalization influences it in real life?

I’m sorry, but no. Your ships are not worth protecting when it contributes to things like rape and child abuse."

[I was unamused](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/147674891104/ao3-is-for-all-kinds-of-fanfic):

> But it’s _not_ a proven fact.
> 
> In the US, text is not child porn. There are other countries that treat things differently, but the US is tremendously permissive about text and more permissive than average about drawings/paintings/non-photo things that involve no real children. Anyone who says otherwise knows _nothing_ about the law.
> 
> You do not need to like or approve of “gross” content, but spreading bullshit as “facts” helps no one.

Someone talked about that racist Dragon Age fic with the corrective rape. (FWIW, I agree it was super creepy. And it actually was about the black female character. This isn't the usual DA fandom thing where people say "ethnic minority" and mean "elves are oppressed!!!") However, I stand by AO3's rules. When we said we were protecting offensive fic, we didn't mean protecting tentacle porn from easily startled types: we meant _actually_ wildly offensive fic that we ourselves hate. [My response](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/148369903244/ao3-is-for-all-kinds-of-fanfic):

> AO3′s rules are very clear: rapefic must be tagged with either the archive warning for that or with “Choose Not To Warn”. If someone is not using one or the other of those, you can report them to Abuse.
> 
> However, if the fic is merely racist or distasteful, that’s not against the rules. In that case, backbutton and avoid the author. AO3 allows distasteful fic because doing so protects all content from nitpicking about who has the right to enjoy what in fiction. This protection is important for all sorts of people far beyond one tasteless Dragon Age fic, and witch hunts over content disproportionately affect sensitive authors who are exploring their own issues, not trolls who are writing to shock–and therefore enjoy it when they get a reaction.
> 
> No one is saying that there is no gross content on AO3 or that you have to like that content, just that you shouldn’t try to kick it out.

And, inevitably, people eventually showed up to boggle at the idea that anyone could dislike AO3 or try to police it. [My response](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/148391223554/ao3-is-for-all-kinds-of-fanfic):

> #^what???? #how is this possible?? #fanfiction #fandom #ao3 #fic #guys no freedom of expression is exactly that: f r e e d o m
> 
> It’s simple: fandom on tumblr is busily refighting all of the fights we had in letterzines, at cons, on usenet, on mailing lists, on LJ, yadda yadda.
> 
> In particular, it’s busy refighting the “dubcon would be rape IRL, don’t you know?” fight, wanking about warnings, freaking out that virtuous character A is unpopular while villainous or excessively whitebread B is inescapable, freaking out that people like squicky kinks with fluffy characters (exacerbating the previous complaint, of course, as writers take their tasty dubcon over to “trash” pairings where it’s welcome), and fretting over whether women liking m/m is righteous queer activism or yucky fetishization.
> 
> (I have to admit that so-called “proghet” discourse is a new one for me though. That’s the “It’s misogynist to write slash, so you should write het or m/m/f instead” stuff. Back in my day, we wanked about slash being misogynist for its treatment of OFCs! And we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow for our Usenet! I guess this is the logical outcome of AO3 being a safe haven for slash, unlike most big archives past and present and of AO3 having clear pairing categories, unlike almost every other site, but it has been quite a shock to see the rise of this attitude. It’s like people have never been on any archive but AO3 and don’t know that het still dominates everywhere else… And then I remember that it would be quite easy to be graduating from college, having been in fandom since you hit puberty, and to have your entire fandom experience be AO3/Tumblr. But most of the wank is solidly 90′s crap that was on every mailing list once upon a time.)
> 
> The wank isn’t new, nor is the reinventing the wheel and thinking every debate is original and vitally important. Fans will always do that. What I object to is the rising perception that kinkshaming is acceptable on AO3 or that it’s the default in fandom and the rising tide of fake activism designed to cleanse AO3 of filth or to right some terrible imbalance of fic types there.
> 
> We worked hard to build our safe haven for the freaky porn, especially the slash, and I for one intend to defend it.


End file.
